Always in motion is the future.

Tagged with a Splotchy virus by Randal. My contribution is after the rules...

Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

The ground crunched beneath my feet. Besides my noisy footsteps, I heard only the sound of the gentle crackling fire behind me. Its faint orange light lazily revealed my immediate surroundings. Beyond the glow, there was total blackness. I whistled. I took the small rock I had been carrying and whipped it away from me, expecting a thud, crack or plop -- but a soft yelp of a cry answered. [Splotchy]

Failing to leap tall buildings of uneaten Nestlé Crunch and Krackel bars in a single bound, I had waded through them instead, the crunchiness of the candy adding to the crunchiness of the drought-stricken, pebble-strewn soil, elevating the aural to a heretofore unknown level of crunchiness, as if Dick Cheney himself were trampling the defleshed bones of third world refugee children scattered about his clawed feet, the dried marrow spewing forth from between shards glistening in the wan moonlight.

I shivered.

Silently thanking the Old Ones that I had decided to stuff my backpack with packets of instant coffee instead of those mini boxes of Rice Krispies or stalks of celery because those things are far too crunchy in comparison to things that are not like packets of instant coffee and all that Xtreme! crunchiness would've only disoriented my delicate sense of hearing, therefore preventing me from ever hearing the creature amidst the cacophony. Sore feet and a diet of nothing but caffeine and sugar for days and days. No wonder I ended up lost in this haunted quail preserve.

That feeble sound, I soon found out, was made not by a hideous hellbeast bent on tricking me by deceptive vocal prestidigitation into becoming its next meal, but by a meek, mousy, nearly hairless creature no more than three feet tall, almost like a midget hobbit dwarf with skin more pale than a made-up Twilight extra who dwells in a sunless condo. As it entered the camp, illumined by the rustle and pop of burning wood, I saw through the curling smoke that it was visibly frightened. I calmly gestured towards it, quickly pulling back, trying to reassure it that I meant no harm.

"Do you understand me? Can you speak? Who are you?"

"My name -- my name is Dick Cheney." [Randal Graves]

-----

I'd been living with Cheney in his small hut for only a matter of weeks but it seemed to have been years at this point. I had come to this haunted quail preserve looking for Cheney, hoping he could train me as he had my father.

So far all I'd faced was exhaustive physical training peppered with gems of Cheney's grammatically challenged "wisdom" as he taught me how to try and change reality through sheer exertion of willpower. I was having trouble taking Cheney's ancient bullshit belief seriously.

Today I was running through a jungle obstacle course with Cheney, as usual, perched lazily on my back sipping from an airplane bottle of scotch. We (I) had been running, swinging and jumping through the impenetrable brush for several sweat-soaked hours already when he tapped me on the shoulder.

"Piss, I must."

Having to go myself and grateful for the respite I skidded to a stop and placed the horrible little gnome onto the ground next to me. We both unzipped and started to drain our rancors. Curious; I snuck a glance at his miniature lightsaber. He must of caught sight of me looking.

"Judge me by my size? Size matters not."

Cheney groaned and shook his head. He put his repulsive, gnarled claw on my hand led me to a nearby clearing. At it's immediate center sat a small, grizzled man with an unbelievably long, white beard.

"Control the mind of the Blitzer you must," said Cheney.

"I can't Master Cheney," I whined. "He's too logical."

"That," he sighed, "is why you fail." [Dean Wormer]

Whomever wants to take up the story (don? Lockwood? ladybug?) please feel free. :-)

I hate that word. It's a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen.

Gingrich Calls for Pelosi to Resign.

Mengele Calls Kevorkian a Medical Monster.

Paris Hilton Calls Lindsay Lohan Easy.

Jason Calls Freddy a Murdering Psycho.


You get the idea.

You must chill. You must chill.

Still around. Just busy.

If you haven't been exposed to the creepy story of Ben the Stalker, AKA "Douche Quadbike" then you've missed a "Chocolate Rain" level internet meme.

Ben "didn't understand" why his girlfriend Loren left him two years ago so he spent nine months making a video to win her back... or something. It's not really clear what he's trying to do with this video other than prove he's a muscular, self-centered moron who is in love with his own ass. And Loren... or something.

Also thrown into the mix- Ben mentions fundraising to fight cancer at the end and that one of the reasons he did this video was to audition for the role of Captain America in the upcoming Hollywood movie.

Here's the video-



A bunch of guys over at Cracked.com got a look at that and realized that Ben was a grade-A psycho and must be dealt with in the time honored web way of dealing with such people- mocked with a Youtube video. Actually several videos.

The best parody video was made by a guy named Sanchez, who wrote a hysterical song about Ben set to images from his own film. What followed were threats by Ben to have him arrested, deported, turned over homeland security or Ben would "take justice into his own hands." Here's the Cracked forum thing detailing the whole sad affair.

Here's a techno remix of Sanchez's original song that's pretty good.



On a serious note I was really, really disturbed by the original link to Ben's video and the thousands of comments in reply which are mostly supportive of his quest to win his ex-girlfriend back. We joke about the fact that Ben is a few eggs short of an omelet, but I don't doubt for a second that there's a restraining order underneath all of this. That so many people take Ben's original video as something sweet is depressing.

She's fair game, Joe. It's always open season on princesses.

This is an excellent take on the state of politics today.

The new chair of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), Clintonista Bruce Reed crooned in a Slate.com article that Specter’s defection was “an encouraging omen for Obama’s effort to build a new, pragmatic, post-partisan politics.”

“Post-partisan politics” is code for a politics that basks in the glow of the status quo—a politics that accommodates itself to the needs of corporate America. In this context, “ideological politics” becomes code for people who care about such quaint principles as democracy and justice. People like crazed ideologue Chris Bowers.

It never ceases to amaze me how short-sighted the giants of American business seem to be when it comes to ceding political power to the electorate. They're unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifices and continue to demand that they not only have the biggest seat at the table, but have last word on everything.

They seem incapable of understanding that this situation cannot continue in perpetuity. If the little guy isn't tossed a bone once in a while history shows us they'll become so frustrated and take it upon themselves to change the status quo, through whatever means necessary. In that case it won't matter a wit what the giants of business think about the issues at hand- they won't be at the table in the first place.

FDR understood this seventy years ago. Why was the lessen lost on our political and economic leadership today?

Real tomato ketchup, Eddie?

I'm worried that because I prefer yellow mustard to dijon I may be a conservative.

In all seriousness- the right is really beyond parodying at this point, aren't they?

Everyman.

I haven't got a brain... only straw.

We have a lot of crows and jays out my way threatening our garden. Help me pick the theme for our scarecrow by voting on the options below or suggesting one of your own.

I'll post pictures of the completed scarecrow once we have it up.

Remember: it has to be SCARY.

A.

B.
C.
D.
E.
F.

Our justice must be swift and merciless.

Hey, Harry Reid. Bring this asshat in line as of yesterday or get the hell out of your position and let a real Democrat have your job.

Question: With your departure from the Republican Party, there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate. Do you care about that?
Specter: I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.

The senate republicans have already signaled their willingness to filibuster Franken once Coleman runs out of stalling tactics. Does this make it sound like our newest democrat will be on the right side of that vote?

No, they're doing the work of the Lord. In a Ferrari, they can just do it faster.

Dom DeLuise: Rest in peace, roly-poly bringer of joy.

If there was ever a comic actor that I wanted to pinch the cheeks of it was DeLuise. He just seemed that lovable.

My personal favorite DeLuise bit from Blazing Saddles:

Dammit Spock I'm a doctor not a physicist!

I'm going to write up a short, spoiler-free review of "Star Trek" which my oldest and I were lucky enough to see yesterday at a local critic's screening.

Let's tackle the two big questions right out of the gate. Was the movie any good and was the movie true to the Trek universe that's built up over the last forty years?

The answer to the first question from myself and my daughter is an empathetic "hell yeah, this movie rocks!" This is everything a summer movie should be (action, humor) and more. That "more" is actually character development and personal stakes for each of the principles, which is a rarity is big studio pictures these days.

It was almost shocking to see these real dramatic stakes in a film like this, where Paramount studios has so much riding on the revival of this golden franchise. The safer road would have been to ignore the characters and hope you can fake out the audience by drowning the film in action. To his credit that's not the road JJ Abrams takes here. I've read chatter on movie boards that compare this movie to last summer's "Iron Man" to that extent. It does sort of have that Iron Man vibe where it's a lot "meatier" of a film than you expect.

As to whether the movie is true to the Trek universe, well, you're just going to have to decide for yourself. This is not the Battlestar Galactica-style re-imagining/ reboot of Star Trek that people have been talking about. It's difficult to describe what this is, but it's more along the lines of some sort of surreal dream featuring characters those of us who loved the original Trek are probably a little more than a little familiar with than we should be.

A friend who I love recently shared his dread that this movie would be bad to the feeling he got from "Phantom Menace." After seeing this film I'd say this was a light years better film but I do think there is something that can be gleaned from comparing the two franchises. One of the worst sins of many that Lucas committed with the prequel triology in my estimation was that he took a universe that was as expansive as your imagination, full of limitless possibility and shrunk it down to only a few planets and a few characters who implausibly crossed paths again and again. Lucas made his fictional universe smaller.

The thing I love about this movie is it takes the Star Trek universe, a universe which had become calcified over the last couple of decades, and expands it once again. The stories that can take place after this film are as limitless as the imagination. I love Trek, but Trek canon is choking the universe to death. JJ Abrams and his writers have revived Gene Roddenberry's Trek so that it can breathe again.

And make no mistake about it - Gene Roddenberry's spirit is intertwined through this movie. His optimism, his characters, his humanism and his vision of a future where we can solve problems through sheer force of will are all here. The body may look different but the heart is the same.



Foremost among these are the relationship between Chris Pine's Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto's Spock. Getting this relationship right was probably the most difficult challenge Abrams and company faced. Besides the original show there have been thousands of books, short stories and even slash fiction written about this friendship.



I'm happy to say that they don't only get this relationship right but every other character from the classic series. I expected to like Simon Pegg's Scotty going into the film but was surprised at how much I also enjoyed Anton Yelchin's Chekov and Karl Urban's McCoy (the latter seemed to be channelling DeForest Kelley.) Leanord Nimoy is wonderful, of course.

My biggest criticism of the movie: I hate the new interiors of the new Enterprise. The bridge is ridiculous, especially the touch screen wall computers behind the Captain's chair. It's not a good thing that the bridge reminds me of "Galaxy Quest," even though that movie in itself is wonderful.

Most of all I despise the new engine room with all it's pipes, cooling tanks and gauges. Tell me if you don't feel like they shot these scenes in a brewery. There's a horrible low-budget film called "Space Mutiny" which Mystery Science Theater tore apart a few years back that utilized an abandoned factory doubling as the engine room of a big ship in space. I couldn't get that movie out of my head every time they showed the engine room.

One other minor problem I had with the film was the score. It was probably better than average for an action movie but one thing it didn't do was utilize all of that wonderful music written for the original series by Alexander Courage and other composers. How cool would it have been if that fight music from the show worked it's way into a fist fight, or the weird Vulcan tune played when they showed that planet? The theme music from the series isn't the only memorable tune.

But in the end these are minor quibbles because Abrams gets the characters so right. I can forgive a goofy looking engine room set if it's got a believable Scotty standing in it yelling "I'm giv'n it all she's got, captain!" I can't wait to see this movie again and hope that sequels will be coming. Star Trek is back. It's been away too long.

But, Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills. You're from two different worlds... Oh, I've wasted my life.

I was going to post this over at Atomic Romance but I don't think it would be appropriate to bump the somewhat somber post Swiney put up this morning. Head over there if you have a second and let him know you're thinking about him and his sick son.

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. If you have a comic shop in your neighborhood they're most likely participating. It means exactly what it says: they're giving away a bunch of free comics created specifically for this yearly event.

If you have kids who like comics even a little bit I'd encourage you to participate in this. You can't beat the price and it's a lot of fun. Many shops have local artists come out to talk about their work and sign autographs.

I'm going going to be hitting a couple of shops myself but only after my oldest daughter and I watch the special screening of Star Trek I won tickets for last week. I don't mean to rub it in but I get to see the movie before everyone else except Steve, who already saw a screener and said it was good.

When I get to Free Comic Book Day I'm going to grab an issue of this free book...



Doesn't that look fun?

So, to sum up-- keep Swinebread in your thoughts, go to Free Comic Book Day by any means necessary and I'm seeing Star Trek before the rest of you rubes, not that I'm bragging about it or anything. This will be absolutely the last you'll hear from me on Star Trek other than the little review I'll write up this weekend which will be no tribble at all.

Sorry.

Live long and prosper.

Sorry.

Dean